


Errera to the End

by EllBoots



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: F/M, La la la i'm not sure what this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-23
Updated: 2014-06-23
Packaged: 2018-02-05 23:24:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1836010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllBoots/pseuds/EllBoots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Yorkalina oneshot based around one of my Carolina headcanons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Errera to the End

When he first met Carolina her bright red hair was falling loose around her shoulders, the ends lightly curled so that it bounced when she walked. York had immediately noticed how strands had fallen in front of her eyes, and she had constantly been brushing it aside. He’d been sitting dejectedly at the bar of the Errera, annoyed that his friends had left him behind but partially blaming himself for being unable to summon the courage to tell them he’d been drafted into Project Freelancer and would soon be leaving them. His head full of regret and beer he couldn’t bring himself to get up and leave, only casually flick his lighter on and off, half hoping it would get him kicked out and put in a taxi home.

            He had seen the flash of red out of the corner of his eye, and then his lighter was gone from his hand. He whipped around, ready to ask the stranger what the hell they were playing at, but he hadn’t expected to see a beautiful woman standing in front of him. In later years York thanked his lucky stars that he was too shocked by the sight (and the drink), to properly respond, otherwise he might have used an awful pick-up line and she almost certainly would have left. Instead he had sat where he was, complete with a dumb, unfocussed expression painted on his face, as the woman clicked the lighter on, then off, then slipped it into her purse. Again, he was on the verge of complaining, but she caught his eyes with her own, almost unnaturally green ones.

            “Do you want to dance?” she had asked, sounding almost bored.

            “Um,” he’d said, not entirely grasping what was happening, “Sure?”

            “I’m Carolina,”

            “Okay,” he said, standing up from his stool with what he hoped was an unnoticeable drunken wobble. Carolina raised her eyebrow, strands of hair falling in front of her eyes. Again, he was distracted. Then he shook himself, realizing why she was looking at him strangely, “Oh, uh, I’m—“ but she had given a small laugh and began walking towards the dance floor, out of earshot in the loud music. He had wondered if that was it, she’d lost interest and gone to leave, find someone who was still in control of his higher brain functions to dance with. Then she turned around, having just barely entered the crowd of bodies on the main floor, and gestured for him to follow.

He remembered how her light blue skirt had swirled around her legs and her hair had shimmered as she danced. Without thinking, he’d reached to brush some of it out of her face, staring all the while at her beautiful green eyes. After that they kept eye contact as they danced closer and closer together. He hadn’t cared how uncool he came across, unable to keep his eyes off of her, because he had thought that her beauty was worth drinking in; appreciating for every second it was close to him. After all, he was being deployed soon, who knew if he would ever have the opportunity to dance with a beautiful girl again. Who knew if he’d even come back alive.

Looking back on it, he knew it hadn’t been the most normal of first encounters. He remembered it almost as an out of body experience: he detached from the world, forgetting about the war and his friends and his lighter. It was just him and Carolina, just music and light and dancing. Then, it was leaving the Errera, their odd, unexplainable bubble. It encapsulated them in the ride home and as they entered Carolina’s apartment, still hardly speaking to one another, talking only with their hands and mouths as they fell into bed.

* * *

 

When they met again on the Mother of Invention, York had been surprised to see that Carolina’s hair was straight and scraped back into a ponytail. He thought it made her look much older, her features more harsh, although still beautiful. They had spoken to each other only briefly. York hadn’t been nervous, it wasn’t his way, but he thought Carolina seemed different- not warm or even friendly, but collected and professional. She hadn’t laughed once.

* * *

 

York was sure that he, being the only one who regularly saw Carolina out of her armour both while training and out of, in what could very tentatively be called their personal lives, was the only one that noticed how Carolina’s hair dictated how she conducted herself. He suspected that she subconsciously used it to separate her private and professional lives, and as he was the only one with an intimate knowledge of both of those lives, he was the only one with the data available to notice the changes.

At the end of the day she would come into her room ( _their_ room, everyone knew, but it was Carolina’s on all the files), remove her armour, and take her hair down. York always tried to finish at the same time as she did, as he loved the sight. She didn’t know it, but as he watched her the scary, commanding soldier melted away and York was left staring at the stunningly beautiful (although admittedly still quite scary) woman he had met in the Errera.

She would smile contentedly, laugh at York’s comments, kiss him gently. She would be sarcastic, make jokes, talk about work and training, as well as things other than work and training. York would reach forward to brush the hair from her eyes, and she would look up at him through her eyelashes, looking younger than usual, and always happier. It was the closest thing to carefree York ever saw dance in her eyes, the spark that he hoped with all his heart was love.

Carolina never noticed that whenever they argued she would angrily scrape up her hair into a ponytail, using the tie she kept around her wrist. That afterwards she would be harsher and more calculating in her comments, caring less about hurting York and more just about winning. York always knew he had been forgiven when she at last let her hair tumble back around her shoulders.

Somewhere deep down York knew he had loved her from the moment they met in the Errera. However, he hadn’t admitted it to himself until the third night he was out of med bay, sitting in his own, little used room, trying to come to terms with what he saw in the mirror through his one remaining working eye. Carolina had shown herself in, dressed casually, hair messy and still kinked from the ponytail, falling untidily down her back. She had looked uncharacteristically nervous. York, self conscious in the face of her beauty, had turned away, but Carolina took his hand and turned him around. Resigned, he looked into her bewitching eyes, expecting to see horror and disgust. Instead, she had smiled, and kissed the mangled scar tissue so gently he thought he might have imagined it.  After that, he couldn’t hide from anyone that he was in love.

* * *

 

York rubbed a hand over his face, feeling the sting in his eyes as the moisture from his drooping eyelids hit them. He raised his mug to his lips again, disappointed when he realized there was nothing left to drink. He sighed deeply, taking his feet from the table and popping his back with a groan. He glanced again out the viewing window, suppressing a yawn. It didn’t look like Carolina was going to stop any time soon, he supposed all he could hope for was that she wouldn’t stay up all night training again like she had a few times before.

York took his empty mug back to the kitchen area, dumping it in the sink and jumping, startled, as it crashed against the other pots stationed there. That was definitely a sign that he needed to get to sleep. He wandered back over to the viewing area, trying to keep his eyes open. If he sat back down now, he knew that he would fall asleep and wake up sore in the morning, so there wasn’t much point in that. Still, he felt bad leaving her, even if she didn’t know he was there.

And that about sums it up, he thought with a sigh.

* * *

 

As the days wore on, more and more missions ended with Tex bursting in to save the day, and the fractures in the team deepened to breaking point, York rarely saw the Carolina from Errera any more. She slept with her hair up now, and York couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard her laugh. Instead, when they curled up in bed after speaking barely a few words to one another, York had taken to replaying their meeting in the Errera in the dark behind his eyelids, and for a while he could imagine the woman in his arms remembered what it meant to let go and be happy.

One night, York was waiting in their room whilst Carolina trained. She returned tired and frustrated, stripped her armour off and left it on the floor where it fell. She went to move to the bathroom to shower, but York gently touched her wrist to stop her. Carolina looked up at him questioningly, but her face was tainted with derision.

York reached for the back of her head, and gently pulled away the hair tie keeping it up. The red locks fell down free, bumping against the curve of her ears, neck and shoulders on the way down. She bowed her head, but York gently took her chin and tilted her head up with a weak but genuine smile, then went to sweep away the stray hairs from her face. Although he was smiling, his eyes were pleading with her, begging her to be okay. Neither of them spoke when Carolina pulled York into a tight, emotional hug, her head buried into his chest as he kissed the top of her head.

That night they sat down and talked, and York heard Carolina’s laugh for the first time in weeks.

* * *

 

Despite all the pain he had caused her, thinking she had been betrayed and then the overwhelming guilt she felt when she discovered the truth, the agony Carolina felt when she found out York was dead was inexpressible. She hated every emotion in her body, most of all the overwhelming love that still battered and berated her heart and mind every time her thoughts turned to York.

It was ridiculous, she told herself. Ridiculous to cry when her hair fell into her eyes. To see York standing before her on the Errera dance floor, reaching to move it for her in their own slice of infinity. It was certainly ridiculous when one night she looked into a mirror and thought about how old and bitter she looked. How she ripped the tie out of her hair and saw herself how she had looked before she left her apartment the night they met. She knew that York had preferred her hair down, but she had always told herself it was just more sensible to wear it up to keep it out of her face for work.

Now, she looked at it and could only think of him. She took a pair of scissors the night Epsilon had showed her York’s logs and viciously chopped the locks away so that it was too short to tie up. It was a mess, but its not like anyone ever saw her out of her armour these days anyway. She never let it get long enough to fall into her eyes again.

That night she stayed up clicking York’s lighter on and off, and tried to remember the song that had played at the Errera on the night she fell in love.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written quite quickly so I hope it turned out okay! I just really wanted to write something for these two that looked over their whole relationship, I realise it's written a bit strangely but I hope you enjoyed! Comments and whatnot would really be appreciated.


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